Virus Round 2 and School Pictures!

We've just spend the second weekend in row with a child in a feverish state.  This time Lily's got it and she seems to have it worse than Tyler.  Her fever has spiked to 103 more than once and she gets chills when her fever is at its worst.  Last night she was up several times in the night.  Once, she just needed a hug and story.  Once she just cried out.  And the last time, she started hollering "I puked!  Mommy, I puked!!!!"  Luckily she hadn't had much to eat yesterday and so there wasn't much for her to puke up.  And unfortunately, I didn't go back to sleep in between each of those episodes, so today I was dragging BAD. 

I stayed with Lily today and worked from home.  I'm so lucky to have a good boss that gives me that flexiblity with pretty much no questions asked.  Lily was pretty good all day except when the Tylenol or Advil wore off.  She'd be fine and happy and chatting a million miles an hour and then bam! she'd start crying and shaking and her fever would spike up.  I'd give her more medicine and within 30 minutes, the fever would go down and she'd be playing and chatting like nothing was wrong.  Crazy.

I called the doctor this afternoon, because after her nap her fever spiked up to 102.9 again and she was weak and shaking.  I called too late in the day to get a hold of anyone and I'm sure they will tell me not to worry unless her temp gets to 104 or the 102-103 lasts for 5 days.  Hard not to worry when your kid is shaking like that and crying and burning up and won't eat. 

But again, after the Tylenol, she was wanting to run around and play outside!  She ate a few french fries tonight and a couple crackers so that was pretty good.  I had been bribing her with everything including ice cream and candy and she wasn't even eating that! 

In Tyler news, his bottom left front tooth FINALLY poked through!  He's only been working on that for about 6 weeks now.  The right side isn't far behind.  Now the fears of him biting me really kick in to high gear!  It's only mildly painful when there's no teeth......it's a whole new ball game when the teeth come in!

Also, I got the kids "school pictures" in late last week.  They turned out so good!

My Blog Book Is Here!!

A few months ago, Mom said to me, "I hope you're saving your blog for the kids to read some day."

The blog automatically archives my older posts but I'm guessing in 30 years that won't still be there!  And since I've abandoned scrapbooking all together, I've been intending to at least print the pages and put them in a three ring binder and/or electronically print them and save them to PDF files. 

But I got to thinking....wouldn't it be cool if I had a book, kind of like the pictures books I've made in the past from Shutterfly, that had all my blog posts in it?  So I Googled "Turn My Blog in to a Book" and interestingly enough a couple different options popped up.  Apparently there's all kind of demand out there for people who write blogs to have them printed as books.  The tool I ended up using, called Blurb, even has a mechanism for selling your book!  It's really too bad that I'm not a good writer and that I have no subject matter to write about except my kids.  I could quit my job, self publish my book and earn pennies on the dollar of my investment! 

So it took me about 6 weeks to work on "my book" and after a week of (not so patient) waiting, it's finally here!!

I'm so proud of it!

I spent the first several weeks working on the blog posts and getting them placed in the book.  I had started blogging in July 2012 so it was only going to cover part of the year.  Well then I got to thinking that it would be a shame to have a book that is only half the year.  So I started importing pictures from January - June and created pages for those as well - some have comments and some are just pictures.  So now I have a full yearbook for 2012!  I had two printed so that I have one for each kid.

It's pretty simple to do and as I used it more, I learned more tricks and got a little more creative with it.  It doesn't give you the kind of flexibility you have with pictures books from Shutterfly or Snapfish so I did have to play with it a bit to make some of the pages look good.  My only other complaint is that in the printed book, the pictures are a little grainy.  But I'm going to look in the settings, the paper choices and so forth and see if there's a way to enhance the photo quality for future books since the website claims amazing quality on photos.  Maybe I didn't do something quite right.  The binding quality is better, I think, on this book than the Shutterfly ones.  My book has over 160 pages so it's important for the binding to be durable!  It cost me about $150 total for both books including the shipping.  At first that sounded like a lot of money to me.  $75 a book!!  But then I rationalized it by thinking that this is actually probably a pretty significant cost (and time) savings over what I would have invested in a hand made scrapbook.  So, there.

I.  Love.  It.

Now I need to start on 2013's book.  And I have visions of creating a couple other books like going back and doing a 2011 one for the first year of Lily's life and doing one that is a 'story of us' kind of thing about Joel and I getting together, engagement, wedding, etc.  But one step at time.  I haven't been doing anything else since I picked up this book making hobby and I miss my knitting!  Joel has a sock hat that is partially knitted and now it's 70 degrees outside.  Whoopsie!

Stay at home Daddy

Even though Tyler was feeling a lot better this morning, we decided to keep him home from daycare anyway just to give him another day to get totally healthy.  He sleeps so much better here and he really needed to rest.  So Joel took a turn to watch him and as I was leaving the house for work, I realized that this was about to be the longest stretch Joel ever spent with Tyler alone!  Gasp!!

And he did GREAT! 

Someone asked me if I left him a list of things to do today around the house.  I laughed and said that I thought Joel might have felt overwhelmed just with my instructions on thawing out milk and feeding Tyler baby food.  So anything on top of taking care of those things was bonus!

Boy did I get surprised!

Not only did Joel take outstanding care of Tyler, including documenting his day similar to how they do at daycare,



but he also did 3 loads of laundry, mowed the grass, washed and put away dishes, ran a couple errands and tilled the garden!!

Holy cow!!  I'm so impressed.  If Joel ever wants to become a stay at home Dad, he's hired!  And really, the best part, was the Joel got to spend some alone time with Tyler.  He naturally had a lot of alone time with Lily when she was little, but with Tyler, Lily's always there so he has to divide his attention. 

Joel said he enjoyed his day, was pleased with all he got done and really like the time he got with Tyler, but he was pretty sure he couldn't keep it up two days in a row.  : )

We all scream for ice cream!

Last week, we randomly decided to go for ice cream and I somewhat reluctantly agreed to go to Ritter's.  Historically, it's not been my favorite ice cream, but I hadn't had it in a while so we gave it a whirl.  Well, while there, I saw a sign for free ice cream on April 22.  I put it in my phone as a reminder and then forgot all about it.

Yesterday while I was fixing dinner, the alarm went off on my phone:  "FREE RITTER'S DAY!"

Who wants ice cream?  We do!  So off we go! (After dinner of course....)

We each got a different kind and Lily was playing musical ice cream bowls so you couldn't stay too attached to the one you ordered!

She was shoveling it in like nobody's business and then all of a sudden she screams "GGAAAAAAHHHHH" and starts shaking her head violently back and forth.   

Joel and I cracked up!  We think she just had her first ice cream headache.

My Sick Little Bird

Poor Tyler has had a fever for the last three days and he's got a stuffed up nose too.  Poor little guy.  He's so pitiful sounding with these little whiny, mewing sounds. 

The fever started on Saturday and was about 101 early in the day.  I gave him Advil and he started to cool down and acted pretty happy.

But by that evening, he got very agitated and his fever spiked up to 103.  I called the doctor on call at the hospital and, as usual, I'm told not to worry.  If his temp went up to 104, then I should worry. 

And twice in the last 24 hours, he's been so stopped up, that he couldn't nurse.  No amount of sucking out his nose was helping so I resorted to pumping and feeding him with a medicine syringe!  Chirp, chirp my little bird!

But this morning he still had a fever of 101 so I took him to the doctor, but of course, by the time I actually see the doctor, his temperature is down to 99 (I didn't give him any medicine today).  Sometime between 6 and 9am his fever broke.  The doctor said his ears look good and lungs sound fine so he probably just has a little virus that has to work it's way through the system.  That'll be $57, please.

I hate this stupid virus!

My Daddy is My Best Friend.....and Tyler too

That's what Lily said this morning on the way to daycare!  How sweet is that??  I almost cried!!

On the way home from daycare today, Lily was just singing and singing away.  Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is actually the song that never ends. 

This past weekend, we enjoyed some time outside.  Lily was having a grand old time blowing bubbles.

 

She's such a good big sister, trying to share with her brother.  I'm sure when the day comes that we want her to share with Tyler, she'll be totally uncooperative and unwilling!

 

Siblings Day

Yesterday was National Siblings Day.  I'm not entirely sure what that means, but here's a couple pictures of some siblings!

We went for a walk and Lily insisted on pulling the wagon.  Tyler just looked around and took it all in!

A couple weeks ago, I finally reached the point where I could give the kids a bath at the same time without fear of Tyler falling over every 3 seconds and/or trying to prevent him from jumping out of his "boat."   This makes bath time so much easier.  Unless you're Joel....he says he's not ready yet to tackle both kids at once.  :)

The thing during tonight's bath was running away from the sock fuzz.  I don't get it, but my whole family has issues with sock fuzz between their toes except me.  Sometime's Lily goes around pulling people's socks off and checking between their toes.  "You have fuzz??"  she'll ask.

But tonight, one of the kids entered the bath tub, apparently with a ridiculous amount of fuzz and so there were bits of it floating all around in the tub.  Lily was having a meltdown about it.  Any time a piece floated near her, she was scream, "AHHHH that fuzz is gonna get me!"  "I hate that fuzz!  I don't want it to touch me!!"

Trying to fish out sock fuzz floating around in water is no easy task!

Is anyone else getting suckered by these big eyes like I am?  Whatever he wants, he can have!

Is there a doctor in the house?

I have the cutest kids on the face of the earth.  C - U - T - E!  Just sayin'!

Tonight I had volleyball and it was the tournment so I was gone for dinner and bedtime and Joel had full run of the household.  In between games, I get a text.  Looks like Joel's got dinner totally under control!

 

The other day Lily was blabbering on like she does and just generally being a sweetie and then she tells me, in a very serious voice:

"Mama, I'm going to brush your hair because I'm a doctor."

What?? Haha, I'm not sure if she thinks my hair needs some help?  Perhaps the day she spent with Grams in the beauty shop had some affect on her thinking that beauticians are like healers for the hair?

Anyway, then today, she was playing around with Joel's ear plugs and told me:

"I'm going to tie this around my arm because I'm a doctor."

I have no idea where this doctor thing is coming from but it's so cute.  You want to become a doctor?  You go girl.  I better kick the college savings account up a notch....

Today was school picture day at the daycare.  Lily and I had a disagreement (first of many??) about what she was going to wear for picture day.  She wanted to wear her Dora shirt.  I wanted her to wear anything except something with Dora on it!  Then she wasn't really interested in getting her hair fixed. I had visions of curling it.....I'm an idiot and those visions were quickly replaced by just being satified that I got her hair out her face!  Tyler was a little doll.....I was so sure he was going to puke all over himself before the pictures were taken at daycare so I snapped a couple at home just in case (I also sent a back up outfit but it wasn't as cute as this one).

This past weekend, Lily was getting braver about playing with the neighbor girl, Madison.  I think she's about 5 or 6.  I'm pretty sure Lily was trying to boss her around.  That's my girl!

Lily and Tyler are getting pretty fun to watch as they play together.  Tyler will grab anything that's within his reach.  We keep telling Lily that if she doesn't want Tyler to get her stuff, she can't put it down next to him!  She's learning, but not fast enough....last night, they were playing on the floor and Tyler got a hold of Lily's hair and came away with a giant chunk of it! 

Lily's still at it with the camera.  Some of her latest photos aren't too bad!